The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 438 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 10 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Israetel: Society will eliminate biological aging by the mid-to-late 2030s
“I think a lot of people aren't prepared for the mid to late 20 thirties, maybe even earlier, when the, when we just don't have old people anymore. We have people that are chronologically 57 years old, but biologically they look 22.”
Frerichs: Companies Abandoning ESG and DEI Will Massively Outperform
“I think this is actually an interesting opportunity to see which companies are walking back from a lot of the ESG and DI commitments. I think those ones are going to massively outperform the ones that try and serve every single.”
Bookman: Andreessen Horowitz Acted Like SoftBank a Decade Ago
“They were the soft bank, you know, like, 10, 10, 12 years ago.”
Bookman: 1% of Oracle public sector clients sue and over half dissatisfied
“Some of the stats, Oracle, apparently, one percent of its public sector customers end up in lawsuits. And more than half end up, quote, fully dissatisfied.”
McCord: Treating AI progress as ultimate end risks abandoning human defense
“To say that that is the ultimate end of human life, that that's what we move towards, gives you these kind of sinister conclusions, which is like, we should pass the baton to this higher, better intelligence if we can. You know, in other words, like. There's n…”
Lonsdale: Regulators Are the 'Lowest IQ' Group Stifling AI Innovation
“I think this third area is like the lowest IQ area of these four, which is the regulators basically responding to every challenge with rules that just stifle new things way ahead of time.”
Blank: China operates like Silicon Valley while DoD runs like GM
“On a good day, China operates like Silicon Valley, and if we're really lucky on that same day, the DOD is operating like General Motors.”
Stitt: Executive order banned DEI teaching in Oklahoma universities
“Obviously, I signed an executive order that banned DEI teaching in our universities.”
Gil: AI is dramatically underhyped despite current massive investment levels
“AI is in my opinion, dramatically under hyped right now. And I think part of that is number one, we're seeing massive actual revenue and impact without that much adoption, right?”
Gil: LLMs will eventually advance to perform all human services
“You have these steps, and so it's this ladder that you're climbing, and eventually you're going to hit a point where it can do all of human services, right? And I don't know if that's GPT seven equivalent or eight or six or 10 or whatever, but we're going to g…”
Gramm: Comprehensive Accounting of Taxes and Transfers Puts US Poverty at 2%
“If you count all transfer payments and taxes, only about two percent of Americans are poor, and most of those are people that have got a problem.”
Gramm: Real Top-to-Bottom Income Ratio Is 4:1, Not 16.7:1
“When you count all the transfer payments, you count all the income the census doesn't count, and you take into account taxes, the ratio of the top to bottom is four to one, not 16.7 to one.”
Phil Gramm: US Inequality Is Lower Today Than in 1947 After Transfers
“Actually, if you count all transfer payments and taxes income inequality is lower today than it was in 1947.”
Gramm: ProPublica fabricated income metric for Buffett tax calculation
“They took his actual taxes, but they didn't take his actual income. They made up an income by saying what would his income have been if he sold every asset he owned every year and paid taxes on it.”
Gramm: US Has the Most Progressive Tax System in the World
“If you look at the actual tax data based on how we define income, The tax system is very progressive, and it's the most progressive tax system in the world.”
Gramm: Confiscating All Billionaire Income Wouldn't Fund US Government for a Week
“If you took every penny of income of billionaires in America, You couldn't fund the 1920, the 2022 government for a week.”
Greenblatt: Woke ideology significantly drives rising antisemitism and marginalization
“And I do think this crazy woke ideology that sees so many, again, segments of society has a lot to do with why Jews are being marginalized and attacked, but.”
Greenblatt: Ta-Nehisi Coates's book on Israel is biased and distorts perspective
“I think what Ta-Nehisi has said about Israel and about the Jewish people is so objectionable. I think his book is full of bias and it's more notable, not for what it includes, Joe, But for what it excludes, which seems intended to distort and warp the reader's…”
Greenblatt: Tlaib, Omar, MTG, and Carlson are all problematic on antisemitism
“There are members of the squad like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, Who are incredibly problematic. And there are people on the right, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or some voices like Tucker Carlson, who I find extremely problematic as well.”
Greenblatt: Society must focus on merit and opportunity rather than equity
“This kind of rigid oppressor, oppressed ideology, I don't know how anyone who looks at it can't see how it's problematic. We need a society that's not about you know, crazy notions of equity. We need realistic notions of opportunity. We need to focus on, on me…”
Fryer: K-12 education matters more than workplace regulation for racial equality
“Well, their results would say, look, if 80% of the effect is happening before people ever hit the market, that means we need to spend more time in K through 12 education.”
Fryer: Disparities in test scores should not cause standardized tests to be thrown out
“It's not whether or not there's a disparity in the test scores that, that should cause you to throw out the test.”
Fryer: Pure meritocracy yields both higher productivity and diversity by eliminating bias
“If companies have bias, then
Meritocracy is completely consistent with a DEI strategy.
Because what you, because if you're getting to your talent frontier and you have bias, you're removing that bias and you're saying, look, I'm just going to hire the best p…”
Ross: 2017 Syria strike during Xi visit deterred warfare under Trump
“I think it's a big part of the reason that single event, big part of the reason we didn't have much warfare during Trump's whole administration.”
U.S. will instruct Taiwan not to fire first during a Chinese invasion
“And Taiwan can't fire first. In fact, we will tell them that you can't fire first on the Chinese because you don't want to be the one that will quote unquote provoke the war.”
Alperovitch: Xi Jinping is the best thing that ever happened to America
“I think Xi Jinping has been the best thing that's ever happened to America because he has effectively destroyed the Chinese economy. He has clamped down on innovation. He, through his diplomatic efforts through this wolf warrior diplomacy, alienated so many co…”
Lowery: AI-controlled battle systems will be necessary to fight drone swarms
“And in the case of this type of warfare, it's going to be necessary. The necessary decision to go forward with AI-controlled battle otherwise a man or a human in the loop won't work.”
Langone: Taxing the ultra-wealthy alone cannot solve the US deficit
“You don't solve the problem unless you hit the little guy, because there's billions of them and there's hundreds of us.”
Lonsdale: University Students Should Experience Microaggressions and Practice Being Offended
“I think all of the kids coming to university should get practice being offended.
I think it's actually healthy for them
to
You know, we call it microaggressions.
I think we should have all of them experience microaggressions.
They need to learn that it's okay …”
Winston: Economic evidence shows antitrust actions rarely improve consumer welfare
“I went through all the evidence that economists had accumulated. I said, you know, where, where have they done well? You know, monopolization cases, collusion cases, merger cases. Where is there anything strong that shows, yes, consumer welfare, Has improved. …”
Lonsdale: Illumina acquiring Grail would have saved thousands of lives monthly
“I don't know if you saw the Illumina grill one. I wasn't personally involved in that financially, but I have friends on both sides and you probably, you know, grill is a blood test that detects cancer and Illumina was going to scale it up. And the models are t…”
Winston: Occupational licensing only creates barriers, raises prices, and limits services
“So all occupational licensing is doing is putting up entry barriers to new suppliers, raising prices, and limiting service because, you know, there are not as many people around.”
Pahlavi: Iran's leadership functions as a military mafia dividing national wealth
“Well, imagine that you have this huge tent with Khamenei as the main pillars, and under this tent, there's a sort of a symbiosis of a mafia-like military paramilitary group that benefits from economic privileges and a whole host of people directly or closely a…”
Lonsdale: British intel chief believed Iran tricked US into Iraq war
“And one of my mentors ran British intelligence and was involved before the Iraq war in the U.S. And he tells me that the Iranians are very, very clever, the regime and certain people there. And he says that, that he believes from the best intelligence he saw, …”
Pahlavi defends regime change in Iran despite the failures in Iraq
“While at the time it was putting an end to an existence, particularly the scenario of Iraq which was an argument for regime change, which happened, but the way it was handled, gave the name regime change a bad reputation. What I've been arguing is that regime …”
Leo: CFPB is probably the worst federal agency in US history
“The CFPB, I think is probably the worst federal agency we've ever seen. It violates every single principle of the separation of powers and checks and balances. And this one in particular, not only violates all of that, but it violates the spending power of Con…”
Lomborg: Education returns $65 per dollar versus roughly $2 for climate spending
“Should I be spending money, for instance, on education and get 65 dollars for every dollar spent? Or should I spend it on environment? And if we're very lucky on climate, you can get a couple of dollars back on the dollar.”
Lomborg: Inaction on climate change will cost about 3-4% of GDP
“Climate change, if we don't do anything about it, will probably cost us, say, three, four percent of GDP”
Lomborg: Solving Developing World Indoor Pollution Requires More Fossil Fuels
“So this is where one of those very, very simple solutions that require development, and that require more fossil fuels.”
Emil Michael: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky could not have built Uber
“And now I would argue that Brian Chesky could not have built Uber.”
Uber would be worth $600 billion today without leadership disruption, says Michael
“Six hundred million? Five X. Yeah, six hundred billion. We would have been Instacart. We would have had a payment system because we'd have so much share of wallet. There was so much more we would have done.”
Michael: Uber beat Lyft by 20x despite Lyft launching ridesharing first
“What's the difference between Lyft and Uber? We started at the same time. Lyft is worth six billion dollars today. That's a 20 x difference. The single difference was leadership and ambition, right? The only thing you could attribute it to, because they starte…”
Solana: San Francisco Tax Dollars Fund Activists Who Shut Down Bay Bridge
“Taxpayers in San Francisco are being forced to fund organizations that, for example, are shutting down the Bay Bridge. That's just crazy, and nobody knew that until we went and Filed an information request and was like, they're getting paid by the city.”
Solana: Shared Ideology Created a Decentralized Censorship Regime in 2020-2021
“I think the bigger problem is the culture was completely captured by one ideology. So everybody who runs, who ran the social media platforms, who worked in academia, who worked in government, not just elected officials, but the people who run Washington DC, ev…”
Solana: Governments should stop funding nonprofits and directly manage homelessness
“So the government should not be funding non-profits. Let's just start there. That you can't, the government, if the government's job is to solve the problem of homelessness, only someone in the government can be charged with that, can be given the budget, ther…”
Verdon: Big Tech ideological subversion stops government collaboration, helping adversaries
“What I saw with my own eyes was that a sort of cultural subversion within big tech more broadly was stopping a big tech from working with the government, right? Like basically ideologies that sort of were very pervasive within the middle layers of the organiza…”
Verdon: Physics predicts civilization optimizes to consume more energy
“At least from the equations of physics, if you consider the whole system of civilization, the equations predict that the system will optimize towards its growth, towards consuming more free energy.”
Lonsdale: Earth could comfortably support 100 billion people
“I feel like with nuclear energy and things like tunnels around our major cities and stuff to get rid of traffic entirely, cause you can have like arbitrarily, you know, large amounts of going in and out. It seems like there's no reason we couldn't have a hundr…”